New Trump-Miller Strategy Clashes On Immigration And Innovation

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy document appears to bear the strong influence of Stephen Miller and assumes America can gain the benefits of immigration without admitting immigrants. The document, released Dec. 5, criticizes immigration but welcomes innovation and economic growth, which immigrants contribute to, and praises merit but opposes allowing companies to hire immigrants if they are the best fit for a position. The strategy document encourages other countries to open their markets while the United States maintains tariffs to protect favored industries. It also criticizes America’s allies in Europe and minimizes the role of NATO such that a Russian government spokesperson said the strategy is “largely consistent with our vision.”

A Contradiction On Merit And U.S. Immigration Policy

The National Security Strategy document’s immigration references show the significant influence of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. The document criticizes admitting even the most highly skilled individuals to the United States.

“Competence and merit are among our greatest civilizational advantages: where the best Americans are hired, promoted, and honored, innovation and prosperity follow,” according to the strategy document. “Should merit be smothered, America’s historic advantages in science, technology, industry, defense and innovation will evaporate. The success of radical ideologies that seek to replace competence and merit with favored group status would render America unrecognizable and unable to defend itself.”

However, in a glaring contradiction, the document goes on to declare that hiring a foreign-born person, even if they are talented and the best person for the job, would be wrong. “At the same time, we cannot allow meritocracy to be used as a justification to open America’s labor market to the world in the name of finding ‘global talent’ that undercuts American workers. In our every principle and action, America and Americans must always come first.”

That sentiment is consistent with the administration’s immigration policy, which has sought to tilt the playing field against foreign nationals to prevent their hiring in the United States. (That does not mean companies won’t shift resources and hire high-skilled foreign nationals and place them in other countries.) H-1B temporary visas are often the only way for high-skilled foreign nationals to work in the United States long term. The administration has imposed a $100,000 fee on the entry of new H-1B visa holders from outside the United States, making them prohibitively expensive to hire. The Labor Department will propose a rule to raise the prevailing wage requirement with an expected aim of pricing H-1B visa holders and employment-based immigrants out of the U.S. labor market.

Analysts note that the document includes a form of economic illiteracy about employment, also seen in past statements by Miller and Vice President JD Vance, and the impact of immigrants on U.S. workers. Such statements reflect a viewpoint that economists call the “lump of labor” fallacy, the belief that a specific amount of labor or number of jobs exist that could be “taken” by newcomers to the labor market, rather than jobs rising in an economy with increases in consumer spending, capital investment and entrepreneurship.

The U.S. unemployment rate was 4.4% in September 2025, compared to 6.6% in December 1960, when the U.S. labor force was approximately 66 million, less than half the current size of 171 million in 2025.

H-1B visa holders have not prevented U.S. engineers and computer specialists from gaining jobs over the past two decades. The number of U.S.-born workers employed in computer science and mathematical occupations increased by over 2.7 million, or 141%, between 2003 and 2024, according to a National Foundation for American Policy analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data. This compares to an 8% increase in the number of U.S.-born workers in the whole economy.

The number of U.S.-born workers employed in all STEM-related occupations increased by over 3 million, or 50%, between 2003 and 2024. The National Science Foundation reports that at least another 12 million people use their technical experience from a degree in a science and engineering field in jobs that do not meet the federal government’s definition of a STEM occupation.

Innovation And Immigration

The National Security Strategy document boasts about America’s ability to innovate, but expects innovation to continue without immigration. Economists and a significant body of research indicate that this assumption is mistaken.

“Immigrants are central to innovation in America,” said economist Mark Regets, an NFAP senior fellow, in an interview. “Today, less than a quarter of research and development is done in America, and we produce about a fifth of the world’s STEM Ph.D.’s, nearly half of whom are foreign. We now need access to global STEM talent even more than we did in the 1950s—they are both the vast majority of the talent pool and human links to the R&D done in the rest of the world.”

Among doctorate holders (Ph.D.’s) in the U.S. performing research and development as a major work activity, 87% in electrical engineering and 79% in computer and information sciences are foreign-born, according to an NFAP analysis of the National Survey of College Graduates (2023).

Immigrants are responsible for 32% of aggregate innovation in America, over half of which is due to making their U.S.-born collaborators more innovative, according to the model developed by economists Shai Bernstein (Harvard), Rebecca Diamond (Harvard), Abhisit Jiranaphawiboon (Stanford), Timothy McQuade (UC-Berkeley) and Beatriz Pousada (Stanford). “Immigrants represent 16% of inventors, but authored 23% of patents. Immigrant inventors contribute to knowledge diffusion across borders. Using variation from premature inventor deaths, we find immigrant inventors create stronger innovation productivity spillovers on their collaborators, as compared to U.S.-born inventors.”

Soft Power And Immigration

“We want to maintain the United States’ unrivaled ‘soft power’ through which we exercise positive influence throughout the world that furthers our interests,” according to the administration’s strategy document. However, the Trump administration has undermined international education, which many foreign policy analysts view as likely the most important example of U.S. soft power. Administration officials have banned international students from Harvard, attempted to compel universities to limit international student admissions, proposed a rule to disadvantage international students in the H-1B selection process, restricted how long students can stay in their programs and plans to curtail or eliminate Optional Practical Training, which allows international students to work after graduation.

Lawrence J. Haas, a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, notes that Joseph Nye defined the term “soft power” as “the ability to get what you want through attraction rather than coercion or payments. It arises from the attractiveness of a country’s culture, political ideals and policies.” In The National Interest, Haas cites several administration policies and concludes, “With its broad-brush approach, the State Department’s crackdown on international students will likely harm America’s interests by tarnishing its image abroad and convincing the best minds around the world to study elsewhere.”

Economic Growth And Immigration

The strategy document expects America to remain on an economic “growth path” and to experience an ever-rising Gross Domestic Product while at the same time reducing legal immigration and deporting 10 million people. Economic analysis shows that the expectation is misguided.

Economic growth relies on labor force growth and productivity growth, and immigrants are essential to both, particularly given the aging U.S. workforce and the key role they play in boosting productivity.

“The Trump administration’s policies on illegal and legal immigration would reduce the projected number of workers in the United States by 6.8 million by 2028 and by 15.7 million by 2035 and lower the annual rate of economic growth by almost one-third, harming U.S. living standards,” according to an NFAP analysis.

The NFAP analysis does not include the impact of the Trump administration’s plans to restrict high-skilled immigration. Economists Giovanni Peri, Kevin Shih and Chad Sparber found, “When we aggregate at the national level, inflows of foreign STEM workers explain between 30% and 50% of the aggregate productivity growth that took place in the United States between 1990 and 2010.” According to George Mason University economics professor Michael Clemens, that means up to 1/6^th of U.S. economic growth over that 20-year period was due to the flow of foreign-born professionals in science and engineering fields.

Controversial Statements In The Document Beyond Immigration

The document contains several controversial statements about America’s European allies, NATO and Ukraine. The strategy document praises far-right parties in Europe and says a European priority should be “Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European Nations.”

The document shows sympathy toward the Russian government’s position on NATO, stating that among Europe’s priorities should be “Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance.” It also adopts Russia’s view that Europe is an obstacle to peace, rather than Russia, which is the country continuing with its invasion of Ukraine: “The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.”

Syracuse University professor Brian Taylor said on Bluesky: “No surprise I guess, but the new Trump National Security Strategy does not condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine nor list upholding the territorial integrity of states as a key priority for the U.S. in Europe.”

An Attempt To Achieve Scientific And Technological Goals Without Immigration

Trump officials hope to achieve their goals without immigrants and, in fact, reducing immigration remains one of the administration’s top priorities. The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy states, “We want to remain the world’s most scientifically and technologically advanced and innovative country, and to build on these strengths.” Research and analysis show that doing so while enacting significant new restrictions on immigration, including on international students, H-1B visa holders and employment-based immigrants, is unlikely to succeed.